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          KU, Houston to face new behemoth Arizona only once next season

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          Check out the best plays from Hunter Dickinson's 2023-2024 season (2:00)

          Check out Hunter Dickinson's best plays at Kansas after he announced he is returning for a fifth collegiate season. (2:00)

          • Myron Medcalf, ESPN Staff WriterJun 27, 2024, 05:03 PM
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            • Covers college basketball
            • Joined ESPN.com in 2011
            • Graduate of Minnesota State University, Mankato
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          Arizona will face a gauntlet during its debut in the expanded Big 12 next season. But not the slate many had hoped to see.

          The Wildcats will not meet Houston and Kansas -- two projected top-five preseason squads -- multiple times, per the league's conference pairings that were released Thursday, the first schedule after the league added Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State for 2024-25.

          The arrival of Arizona, which will return projected All-American Caleb Love, added another basketball powerhouse to a league that has been viewed as the top conference in the country, pound-for-pound, for more than a decade. The addition presented an opportunity for the league to create home-and-road meetings between the Wildcats and Kansas, the projected No. 1 team in America entering the season, and the Wildcats and Houston, which also appears to be a strong national title contender again under Kelvin Sampson.

          Hunter Dickinson, a second team Associated Press All-American in 2023-24, will anchor a Kansas squad that also added top transfers AJ Storr and Zeke Mayo. L.J. Cryer and J'Wan Roberts are back to lead a Houston program that has won 97 games over the past three years.

          But the only chance fans will get to see those three teams tango will be during an Arizona-Houston game in Tucson and an Arizona-Kansas affair in Lawrence. The times and dates have not been announced.

          But Arizona won't have an easy ride during its first year in the Big 12. Tommy Lloyd's squad will face both Baylor and Iowa State -- another pair of Big 12 squads with top-10 aspirations -- in both home and road games. Still, the idea of Arizona facing Houston and Kansas multiple times was the most intriguing offering the league had. That scenario, however, will not unfold in 2024-25.

          On the women's side, star Audi Crooks and Iowa State will battle Kansas State, a projected top-25 team entering 2024-25, in two matchups next season and Baylor once in Waco.